Introduction. : i'm going to admit something here, something that i find embarrassing: i have desires. perhaps my humanity, my male-ness, should not embarrass me; it does, though. i am embarrassed that i have not yet been able to obliterate lust from my person (and, i am shamed to admit, i doubt i shall ever be permanently rid of it). i am not a big fan of lust, it is a thought-less transient thing that has gotten me into trouble before. on one hand, it embarrasses me because it shows that i am not able to exercise perfect control over my self; how foolish to expect my self to be able to, though. still, i wish i was. on the other hand, it embarrasses me because it seems so stereotypically male. i have nothing against males, mind you, i've been a member of the club for almost twenty one years now, but i hate enforcing stereotypes of gender-difference. i'm a big fan of breaking gender norms, as many of you know. some of you (thinking of my cross-dressing at the semi-formal and other such expressions of similar-seeming tendancies) might be thinking that i might have some deep-seated loathing of males and subconciously want to be a female (because i know that the thought has crossed my mind). i don't think that that's the case, though; i'm pretty sure it's not, at least. so anyway, i'm admitting to having desires. they are very strange things. sometimes i really do feel nearly free of them for long periods of time. other times they are just sort of there, lurking visibly in the background but rarely, if ever, acted upon. there are some times, though, when they make their presence known acutely, though. it is this, latter, sort that i have been in the throes of over the last several days. it is very strange. i find myself wanting a certain special someone back, yet know that it will never be; and what's worse, i cannot imagine, at this juncture, ever truly wanting to be with someone else. so i'm left with a bit of a problem: i want what can never be and nothing else. and then, in the midst of this circular paradox, something new emerges... desire. let me pause to make sure that i am being straight, to clear up any possible confusions. i cannot bring myself to desire "someone special" in so base a way. because i regard it as base, i see such desire as a form of defilement of its object; therefore i do not feel it for those to whom i am actually attracted. that having been said, i am not claiming to feel no desire towards those to whom i am attracted. once i am in a relationship, i am quite open to feelings of "inlove"; something similar which i never-the-less insist is crucially different. but, back to the point. from the chaos-filled void (paradox upon paradox, gentlemen and ladies...) emerges a sort of lusty desire. i'm not exactly sure why or from whence. finding myself unable to attain "love" (i'm sorry, my New Year's resolution was to not use the word 'love' again until i had worked out a comprehensive theory of the nature of love -- i'm still working on it -- so i put the word in quotes to signify that i am using it in the sense that i once thought of it as), i fall into base desire -- something which i would never engage where a better alternative, ie "love", open to me. one last note: the poem uses the word "need" in the place of "want" or another such word. i know that i do not in fact need to act upon my desires, i merely desire to do so. here, then, has been a rather long introduction to a short poem about these feelings of desire; the first LG addition to involve pornography. read on...